Ohio Auditor unveils ShareOhio website in Mentor

State Auditor Dave Yost unveiled a website during a June 26 press conference at the Mentor Public Works Garage that will help communities share equipment with each other.
The website, ShareOhio.gov, allows government officials to enter their capital equipment into a database for the purposes of loaning to and borrowing from other nearby municipalities.
“The only the way we could figure out who had what equipment was to give them a call and ask,” said Don Kerniskey, Wickliffe’s director of public works. “Now we can sit in our office, go online and look down the list and say ‘yeah Mentor has this, the only piece of equipment in the whole county, I need that.’”
Yost said there will be no cost to the entities for sharing the equipment through the site. He added that sharing equipment will allow communities to stretch their public resources further. Communities will be able to put their equipment inventory online and allows for neighboring communities to look at that list and contact each other through the site to inquire about sharing.
“I like to stretch George Washington until he screams,” Yost said, alluding to the $1 bill. “One way to do that without harming services is to frequently get together and share services.”
Yost used the analogy of a four-pound sledge hammer. When he needs it, there’s no other piece of equipment that can do the same job.
“Mostly what it does is sit in my toolbox,” he said. “It probably got a 2 percent utilization rate last year. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s not wasteful to be there, but there’s a better way to do it. My neighbors, when they need a four-pound sledge hammer shouldn’t have to go out and buy one. They should say ‘hey Dave can I borrow that sledge hammer for a half hour?’ And the answer of course would be yes.”
The state Auditor made the announcement in Lake County because it was used for a shared services study of capital equipment use in all 24 Lake County communities done back in 2011. The county was chosen at that time because the service directors in the county already meet on a regular basis and share equipment and services.
A statistical study of 390 pieces of seasonal and nonseasonal equipment was conducted and found that equipment usage ranged from 4 percent a month for asphalt pavers to about 30 percent for dump trucks.
In the short term, Painesville Township Administrator Mike Manary said the smaller communities that have fewer resources will benefit from the ShareOhio website, but there are long-term benefits for the larger cities.
“They still have equipment they can borrow, and over time they’ll stop buying certain equipment because we can start doing it collaboratively,” he said.
Lake County will be the first in the state to use the website. Yost said he has had informal talks with service directors in other counties and will begin reaching out to them immediately. He hopes to have a couple more early adopters to the program by next year.